A former State Department watchdog told Fox News that previous secretaries of state did not use a personal email address for official business.

Leading Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claims over and over she did nothing wrong because her predecessors used personal email addresses. Howard Krongard, who served as inspector general of the State Department from April 2005 to January 2008, strongly disagrees:

“Certainly to my knowledge at least, Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice did not have a personal server. I certainly never either sent an email to one or received an email from one,” said Krongard, who served during Rice’s tenure.

Further, he said, “I would have been stunned had I been asked to send an email to her at a personal server, private address. I would have declined to do so on security grounds and if she had sent one to me, I probably would have started an investigation.”

The IG report, issued on May 25, found that Rice never once used a personal email address to conduct state business. Colin Powell used his personal email address “on a limited basis to connect with people outside the department.” He also informed and “worked with the State Department to secure the system.”

Clinton never asked for approval from senior State Department officials. The IG showed confidence that no one would have given approval.

Last Thursday, Clinton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer she thought she could use her personal email address since former secretaries did the same thing:

“I thought it was allowed. I knew past secretaries of state used personal email,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room, saying the rules were only recently improved.

“They were not a model of clarity and it seems like there is still more work to do on that,” she said.

Krongard also pointed out that Clinton did not have a “Senate-confirmed inspector general” at the state department during her four year term, which meant no oversight:

“I would’ve been the most unpopular person in that building [had I been there],” Krongard said, emphasizing that the inspector general has broad powers and the ability to rein in even the most senior political appointees. “They are the people who enforce the rules, and there was no one enforcing the rules during that time.”

“At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department issues before leaving government service,” says an audit by the State Department Inspector General, obtained by NBC News.

“Because she did not do so, she did not comply with the [State] Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

The report broadly criticized the State Department as well, saying that officials had been “slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks” that emerged in the era of emails, particularly those of senior officials like Mrs. Clinton.

It said that “longstanding systemic weaknesses” in handling electronic records went “well beyond the tenure of any one secretary of state” but the body of the report focused on the 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton sent and received on her private server.

Federal law says everyone must preserve all government records. Clinton claims she did this because the majority of the “emails were sent to people the State Department system.” But the inspector general countered her claim by saying “sending emails from a personal account to other employees at their Department accounts is not an appropriate method of preserving any such emails that would constitute a federal record.”

In March, the Justice Department granted Bryan Pagliano, the man who established her private email server, immunity for his cooperation.

And she had been informed much earlier that July 2014 that those emails weren’t even reaching the State Department personnel that she was communicating with because those messages were going into the spam blocking filters.

Obama gave Hillary the rope , IMO , because that was the dirty deal that was done so she did not squeal about the irregularities DNC pulled to make sure they ran Obama . The superdelegates deserted Hillary and this was the deal for her not to make a fuss. She gets State to build a resume and no oversight to build up the bribe chest .
I think Obama is probably upset at her for going overboard and putting him in a spot.

At some point several years ago I remember reading that Obama had failed to appoint IG’s for a number of sensitive departments. This extends throughout the administration & has been longstanding & deliberate. A criminal cartel avoids responsibility for investigating its own criminal activities.

According to the inspector general’s report, two records information officials in the department raised concerns as early as 2010 that emails sent and received on Mrs. Clinton’s server might contain information that should be preserved under federal law.

Their superior told them that the arrangement had been reviewed and approved, though the inspector general found “no evidence” that this had happened. The supervisor told them their job was to support the secretary and “instructed the staff never to speak of the secretary’s personal email system again.”

The report did not name the supervisor, but several people with knowledge of the episode identified him as John Bentel, the former director of information resource management in the State Department’s Executive Secretariat office. Randall J. Turk, a lawyer for Mr. Bentel, declined to comment Thursday.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, mentioned Mr. Bentel’s role in remarks Thursday on the Senate floor, and complained that Mr. Bentel had refused a request to speak with the committee.